AA School of Architecture

(please log in to see content)

Foundation Course at the AA

The AA Foundation course is a one-year introduction to an art- and design-based education. It allows students to develop their conceptual ideas through experiments with a wide range of media and creative disciplines in an intimate studio-based environment. The course seeks to develop the intellectual and process-based abilities of each individual while simultaneously introducing each individual to themselves: their own interests, passions, aspirations and inspirations. Once confident and articulate about their particular approach, students can readily galvanise their own critique, drive and skills to more successfully pursue an education in various creative disciplines. Drawing on a number of pedagogical practices, experienced tutors and visiting practitioners, the Foundation offers a unique cross-disciplinary education within the context of an architectural school.

(please log in to see content)

Christopher Pierce: the World of the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA School)

https://www.architecture.io – What makes the AA School of Architecture, the oldest independent school of architecture in the UK, the most prestigious and competitive in the world? Christopher Pierce, who has been teaching at the Architectural Association since 2007 and is Director of the AA’s Visiting School programme, gives an exhilarating talk on the AA School's history, culture, and approach to architecture.

(please log in to see content)

Architectural Association [AA] | UNI | Mies. UK

 

After a long hiatus, Mies. UK is BACK!

We visited the Architectural Association in London and met up with the then interim director - Samantha Hardingham - as well as a budding final year student with a lot of ambition and gold leaf.

Interview conducted by: Matt McCallum, Arian Lehner

(please log in to see content)

Online showcase of exemplary work being produced in each of the Taught Postgraduate Programmes at the Architectural Association.

This online event will showcase exemplary work being produced in each of the Taught Postgraduate Programmes at the AA. Throughout the afternoon, students and recent graduates will introduce their programmes and present the projects they have been working on.

Each presentation will be followed by a breakout room to facilitate an in-depth discussion about the projects on show. Applicants to the 2022/23 academic year and interested prospective students are welcome to join to gain an understanding of the breadth of work being explored in the Taught Postgraduate Programmes at the AA.

PROGRAMME:
ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM (DRL)
Dafni Dragiou, Oula Al-Eryan, Yuji Huang, Yunyu Huang, Cloudforma

SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN
Raghav Swarup - Residential Development at Somerset Estate, Battersea Church Road, London
Vasheena Mittal - Environmentally Responsive Office Design: creating comfortable outdoor workspaces using Jaalis, Gurugram, Dehli

ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN DESIGN (PROJECTIVE CITIES)
Clara Asperilla Arias - FROM AUTARCHY TO SYNERGY, A look at the Spanish Countryside from 1950’s to 2020’s

DESIGN AND MAKE
Wyatt Armstrong - Woodland Cabin

EMERGENT TECHNOLOGIES AND DESIGN
Amanpreet Kaur, Ashwin Abraham Mukkaranath, Yi Ju Lin - Coalesce

HISTORY AND CRITICAL THINKING
Jiaqi Wang - Alchemy of the Earth: Construction Sites in the Great Leap Forward 1958-60
Melis Ugurlu - Concrete Matters: Following Concrete as a Matter of Care

HOUSING AND URBANISM
Julia Spirig - From Employment Lands to Makers' Society
Sean Robert Hussey - Live-Work: From the Home to the Urban Block

LANDSCAPE URBANISM
Carlotta Olivari - Rewilding UK

SPATIAL PERFORMANCE AND DESIGN (AAIS)
Yuyang Cheng - The Floating Life

(please log in to see content)

Architectural Education Symposium: Where Do We Go From Here?

Lecture date: 2004-10-25

How should the AA respond to the emerging new orthodoxies in architecture and city planning without losing its distinctive voice? And how should its points of difference in relation to other schools, in respect of its structure and constitution, be strengthened or modified? Paul Finch raises these and many more questions in the opening lecture of the Architectural Education Symposium.

Paul Finch is currently editorial director of the AJ and group editorial director of Emap Construct. He has been a CABE commissioner since 1999, joint editor of Planning in London since 1994, and an AA council member from 1992 to 1997.

(please log in to see content)

Architectural Education Symposium: The School . . .and the External Environment

Lecture date: 2004-10-26

What exactly is the context of an international school? What should its relation be to London and its architectural culture? Jeremy Melvin is a writer who specializes in architecture and has contributed to many professional, national, and international publications.

He teaches History of Architecture at the South Bank University in London.

(please log in to see content)

Architectural Education Symposium: My Thoughts on . . . Architectural Education

Lecture date: 2004-10-26

Because I value the AA most as one of a very few schools devoted to architecture as a singular mode of life agency, I will attempt in my talk to offer a groundwork for a broad discussion of the problem of educating an architect as a cultural activist as distinct from a service professional.

Jeff Kipnis is a critic and theorist, professor at Ohio State University, visiting professor at Columbia University, and founder and former director of the AAGDG, forerunner of the AADRL.

(please log in to see content)

Architectural Education Symposium: The Computer . . .in Architectural Education

Lecture date: 2004-10-27

Given the role of the computer in professional practice, what should be its role within the educational programme? Has anything been lost in the process of its introduction?

AA tutors Mike Weinstock and Charles Tashima propose a greater integration of digital education in the schools future.

(please log in to see content)

Architectural Education Symposium: Assessment and External Examining

Lecture date: 2004-10-28

What should be the nature and structure of assessment within architectural education? Are there are any obvious reforms which might improve the quality and fairness of assessment at the AA? Peter Carl co-directs the graduate programme in the History and Philosophy of Architecture at Cambridge University where he teaches Diploma Studio. He began serving as an external examiner at the AA before many of the present students were born.

In 1988 John Tuomey set up O'Donnell + Tuomey Architects with Sheila O'Donnell, a practice which has won national and international awards. He was President of the Architectural Association of Ireland in 1992 and was elected a fellow of RIAI in 1994. He has taught in the UK and the US and has been an external examiner at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, UEL and the AA.

(please log in to see content)

Architectural Education Symposium: Possible Futures for the AA

Lecture date: 2004-10-28

Alan Balfour, former Chairman of the AA, considers the possible ways in which a school of architecture could allow itself to develop in the immediate future, using strategies inspired by fashion, the arts and entertainment, technology and science and politics to describe these possibilities. All of them require supplements of theory and philosophy, and a sense of the absurd. Alan Balfour is Professor and Dean of the School of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He was Topaz Laureate in 2000.

(please log in to see content)

Architectural Education Symposium: Taschenwelts (small worlds)

Lecture date: 2004-10-29

Taschenwelts are metaspaces in which the relationships of the larger world are reconfigured, where ideas grow or are nurtured to maturity. Greenhouses, wombs and incubators are metaspaces, as are schools. In architectural education this leads to responsibilities, as society seeks answers to the questions of how we live, move, work, and how we are affected by global changes and other peoples plight. Since taschenwelts are also outside the world, they allow the freedom to recreate it, imagine new relationships, and yet carry the risk of these not being realised. This process entails constantly crossing the vertical line of learning and research with the horizontal sweep of intuitive creativity: a mark on the horizon.

Raoul Bunschoten is founder director of CHORA architecture and urbanism.

(please log in to see content)

Architectural Education Symposium: The Constitution

Lecture date: 2004-10-29

How can the AAs constitution be made more accessible and effective? What principles should govern any changes that the AA might make?

Sam Ashenden is senior lecturer in the Department of Politics and Sociology at Birkbeck College and a member of the London Consortium teaching faculty.

Mark Cousins is Director of General Studies and of the Graduate School Histories & Theories programme at the AA. He is a founder member of the London Consortium.

Hugo Hinsley is an architect with experience in housing, community buildings and urban development projects. He is a tutor in the Graduate School Housing and Urbanism programme at the AA and currently a member of the Interim Management Group.

(please log in to see content)

Architectural Education Symposium: Degrees, Units and Half Measures

Lecture date: 2004-11-02

In the 1970s and 1980s theory, concept, research and advanced systems of architectural thought and production were initiated and developed in schools of architecture such as the AA, where, with the advent of the unit system, a very particular and highly influential knowledge formation was introduced. Is it possible now to imagine another system - as effective, as transformative, as radical? Or is it merely a question of the capacity of an individual to take a new direction?

Don Bates ran Intermediate Unit 10 at the AA for six years. In 1990 he set up LoPSiA (Laboratory of Primary Studies in Architecture) in France. In 1993 he returned to the AA to help with the introduction of the Graduate Design Studio and to direct the Media Studies programme. At that time he and Peter Davidson formed Lab architecture studio, currently engaged in four major projects in China. Don Bates is Associate Professor of Architecture at Cooper Union.

(please log in to see content)